February 2008 Financial Report: A Good Start Gets Better

February was a fantastic month for me. I was able to establish a monthly budget and I kept track of literally every cent that came into my possession. Through this I was able to cut spending and increase saving. I employed snowflaking to help build up my savings and I was able to earn a few extra dollars through some excellent referral and rewards programs. I was attentive, disciplined, and now I feel rewarded with the numbers I see. I'm going to discuss in detail over a few posts how I accomplished all of this, starting with an overall look at my net worth. If you take a look at the sidebar you'll see my NetworthIQ graph. Click on that to go to my member profile. NetworthIQ is a great way to keep track of your net worth. Here's my assets after my second month of keeping track:



As you can see, some significant increases. Obviously this is because I'm working with small amounts, but it's still very heartening to see an accumulation of assets - I've never been in this position before! I was able to contribute an extra $100 to my Roth IRA on top of my automatic $200 contribution and an extra $160 in cash savings on top of my automatic $100 savings. I'm already more than 27% of the way toward hitting my asset goal for 2008 of $6,000.



Debt reduction is, and will be for the foreseeable future, small but consistent. My student loan % diff will gradually increase as more of my monthly payment goes toward the principal rather than interest, but the credit card payment will remain the same until I can reach a point where paying it off at once is feasible.

So a small reduction in debt and a big increase in assets lead to a 2.61% increase in my net worth over January and 6.88% for the year thus far. This is great news. I'm psyched about my progress so far and seeing the numbers gives me even more motivation to save.